France Is Poisoning Itself with Cadmium: 100% of Its Adults Contaminated — and le360.ma Would Rather Insult Those Who Say So

Pieter Van der Meulen — Bruxelles, Belgique — 2026-09-11

There is an infallible way to know that a debate is going against you: when people stop arguing about the figures and start arguing about the intentions of those who produce them.

On 13 June 2026, le360.ma (a Moroccan digital newspaper) published a column signed by Florence Kuntz. Its title: "Cadmium: behind phosphate fertilizers, the toxic methods of the radical left". The article is not a scientific response. It is an indictment of people: "instrumentalization of fears", "exploitation of environmental causes for geopolitical ends", "collective psy-cause".

So let us do what this column carefully avoids doing. Let us look at the figures. They are public, they are French, they are European — and they are damning.

What le360.ma itself admits

Let us start with what the column concedes, because it is already enormous. It states in black and white that cadmium is "a heavy metal classified as carcinogenic", that "health authorities have been warning for several years about the overexposure of part of the French population", and that food accounts, "among non-smokers, for up to 98% of the cadmium body burden".

It also reports that the National Assembly passed the text by 144 votes to 22.

So here is a column that admits that a carcinogenic metal contaminates the French through their food, that an overwhelming majority of deputies voted to reduce that contamination, and that spends its 1,500 words attacking the left. Not one figure contradicted. Not one study set against it. Nothing.

What le360.ma omits: the ANSES report

Let us now turn to what the column does not say.

The French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES), acting on its own initiative on the matter, published its expert assessment on 25 March 2026. It was officially taken up by the Centre for Studies and Strategic Foresight of the French Ministry of Agriculture. Here is what it establishes:

And the agency's conclusion, which must be quoted as it stands: "If current exposure levels are maintained and no action is taken, adverse effects in the long term are likely for a growing part of the population."

Let us be precise, because this is a scientific fact and it has to be stated: cadmium is classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which reports to the World Health Organization. The evidence is sufficient in humans for lung cancer, and positive associations have been observed for the kidney and the prostate. Its biological half-life is 10 to 30 years: the body does not get rid of it. The kidneys concentrate 30 to 50% of the total burden.

The cause is identified — and it is named

This is not a militant hypothesis. ANSES is the one writing it: fertilizing materials account for more than 80% of cadmium inputs to French agricultural soils — 55% of that from mineral phosphate fertilizers alone.

In other words: half of the cadmium entering French soils comes from phosphate fertilizers. And since 2019 the agency has recommended a threshold of 20 mg of cadmium per kilogram of P₂O₅.

Now let us see which thresholds France actually applies.

France applies the highest threshold in Western Europe. Four and a half times what its own health agency recommends, and 50% above the European limit. That threshold comes from an Afnor standard made mandatory by a ministerial order of 5 September 2003 — and it has not moved in more than twenty years.

The fact nobody wants to look at

And now, the item you will not find in any le360.ma article.

In March 2016, the European Commission proposed a regulation providing for a reduction trajectory for cadmium in fertilizers: 60, then 40, then 20 mg/kg. A trajectory. A gradual decline.

According to the organization Western Sahara Resource Watch, which relies on the documents in the file:

• on 11 May 2016, the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), the Moroccan phosphate giant, sent a letter to the European Commission opposing the proposal;
• in it, OCP argued that "there is not enough scientific evidence" and suggested that the European Union raise the limit to 80 mg/kg — that is, above what the Commission itself was proposing;
• OCP instructed the law firm Dechert LLP, at its own expense, to lobby MEPs to vote against the cadmium regulation.

We do not present these elements as a judgment: we report them as facts documented by an organization that cites its sources.

But look at the outcome. The 2016 proposal provided for 60, then 40, then 20. The final 2019 regulation retained only a single threshold of 60 mg/kg, with a mere review clause attached. The reduction trajectory disappeared. And Article 49 of the regulation provided for a Commission report — due by 16 July 2026 at the latest. To this day, it has not been published.

Let us put it plainly: Europe wanted to reduce the poison. Someone worked to keep the poison in place.

And Brussels cannot even verify

There is one thing that should cause outrage, and it goes unnoticed.

OCP claims that since 2025 it has been offering fertilizers with less than 20 mg of cadmium per kilogram, thanks to additives capable of "capturing" cadmium during phosphoric acid processing. The company even claims that since 1 January 2025, all phosphate fertilizers exported to Europe show a content below 20 mg/kg.

Asked by Agence France-Presse in August 2026, a European official gave a simple answer: since Europe imposes no systematic monitoring of cadmium on its imports, Brussels is "not in a position to verify" the producers' claims.

Nobody asks a seller to inspect the goods he sells himself. That is exactly where the European Union stands on a carcinogenic metal.

The alerts already exist — and they are official

This is not theory. The reports are in the public databases.

Rappel Conso, official record No. 2026-04-0223: on 21 April 2026, a recall procedure was opened for avocados sold in France, on grounds — quoted word for word — of "Presence of cadmium". The record is public, it comes from the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, and the procedure ended on 4 May 2026. (Point of honesty: the official record does not mention the origin of the products.)

RASFF database — the European Union's rapid alert system for food: according to the coverage given to it by several media outlets, a Spanish notification of 22 December 2025 reports a cadmium level of 0.068 ± 0.009 mg/kg in a batch of Moroccan tomatoes, against a European maximum limit of 0.05 mg/kg. The batch was released, with a simple information notification.

And let us recall one trade figure that is perfectly well established: Morocco accounts for 70.6% of the European Union's tomato imports from third countries. When it comes to tomatoes, Europe's imports bear the name of a single country.

The cost argument collapses

There remains the objection we always hear: removing cadmium would cost farmers too much.

The work of INRAE says the opposite. Taking an additional cost of €100 per tonne of P₂O₅, decadmiation comes to about €2 per hectare of wheat — that is, less than 0.2% of the cost of the crop, put at around €1,600 per hectare.

Two euros per hectare. That is the price of a carcinogenic metal removed from the food chain. Let anyone still come and explain that we must choose between public health and farm profitability, and we will answer with that figure.

Let us be honest — and that is precisely what makes us unassailable

It would be easy here to conclude that Algeria is clean and its neighbor dirty. We will not do that, for a simple reason: it would be false, and we do not lie.

Cadmium is a natural contaminant of sedimentary phosphate rock — the kind found in North Africa and the Middle East — whereas igneous deposits (Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Finland) contain very little of it. Algeria, like Morocco, mines sedimentary phosphate. And the published values overlap: a peer-reviewed study published in 2023 in the journal Materials measures ore from Djebel Onk (Algeria) at 14.3 mg/kg and ore from Khouribga (Morocco) at 16.0 mg/kg; other data sets give the reverse order. The two deposits are indistinguishable: on the order of 14 to 23 mg of cadmium per kilogram of ore, or roughly 46 to 70 mg per kilogram of P₂O₅.

So we will not build our argument on a comparison between two countries. That would be dishonest, and it would be useless.

Because the real question is not which phosphate carries the least. The real question is who worked to keep the poison in fertilizers, and who today refuses to answer the figures.

The method, and what it reveals

Let us summarize what le360.ma does.

An established carcinogen (IARC Group 1) contaminates 100% of French adults. 47.6% of them exceed the threshold for expected adverse effects. 100% of infants aged 25 to 36 months exceed the maximum values. 89% of the foods tested contain it. Phosphate fertilizers account for 55% of the inputs to those soils. France applies the most permissive threshold in Western Europe. Avocados were recalled for "presence of cadmium". And, according to an organization that cites its sources, one operator asked Europe to raise the limit to 80 mg/kg while paying lawyers to persuade parliamentarians.

And le360.ma's answer to all this?

"Collective psy-cause." "Toxic methods of the radical left."

There is the admission. When you have a scientific counter-argument, you publish it. When you do not, you go after those who ask the question. A 1,500-word column that cites not one contradictory figure, but attributes intentions to deputies, journalists and researchers, does not defend an industry: it protects it.

We, for our part, did the work this column avoids. We read ANSES, the European regulation, the French parliamentary report, IARC, EFSA, the official recall records. Everything is public. Everything is verifiable. Nothing is invented.

That is the difference between a newspaper and an instrument. A newspaper publishes the figures. An instrument attacks those who produce them.